In general, ink ribbons for printers and other comparable appliances are presently housed in cartridges which permit rapid and simple changing of ink ribbons. In order to keep the ribbon under tension in the printing zone, the ribbon loop extending outside the ribbon cartridge must be trained, in general, around guide webs or along the front surface of the printing head itself. Therefore, it is generally necessary, upon insertion of the ribbon cartridge, to thread the ribbon manually into the guide path, which renders the insertion process more difficult and causes the hands of the operator to be soiled by the highly staining ribbon.
A replaceable ribbon cartridge is disclosed in West German Patent Publication DE-OS No. 3214633, in which the ink ribbon is installed automatically around the guide webs upon insertion of the ribbon cartridge and subsequent feeding of the ribbon. The construction of the guide webs is comparatively costly in that either a plurality of guide webs must be mounted on each printing head carrier precisely opposite one another or must be molded integrally with the head, such that the molds and the molding process become more complicated.